Biography:Janet (Jancy) Hoeffel specializes in criminal law and procedure, death penalty law and evidence. Her prior work experience includes six years as a public defender for the District of Columbia, where she practiced both trial and appellate advocacy, and as a litigator with a firm in Denver, Colorado.

Her scholarly work has focused on the constitutional regulations of discretionary actors in the criminal justice system. Recent publications relate to pretrial disclosure of exculpatory evidence for criminal defendants, “Activating a Brady Pretrial Duty to Disclose Favorable Information: From the Mouths of Supreme Court Justices to Practice,” 38 N.Y.U. REV. L. & SOC. CHANGE (2014); the lessons of death penalty law for juvenile transfers, “The Jurisprudence of Death and Youth: Now the Twain Should Meet,” 46 TEX. TECH. L. REV. 29 (2013); and the border search exception to the Fourth Amendment, “Fear and Loathing at the U.S. Border,” 82 MISS. L. J. 833 (2013). She also recently co-authored two casebooks and a hornbook on criminal investigative and adjudicative procedure.

Hoeffel joined the Tulane Law School faculty in 1999 and served as vice dean from 2009-2012. In 2017, she was the recipient of the President’s Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Teaching. She received the Felix Frankfurter Award for Distinguished Teaching, the law school’s most prestigious teaching honor, from the Class of 2005. She was one of eight law professors invited to participate in an Innovation Summit on improving assessment tools for law students in 2013.

Hoeffel also has served on the Louisiana Public Defender Board, where she rewrote the statewide practice standards for criminal defense attorneys, and the boards of the Innocence Project, the Capital Appeals Project and the Promise of Justice Initiative. She has served as an expert witness on the death penalty and on effective assistance of counsel, testified before the Louisiana legislature and frequently given expert commentary for news media.